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sociotom 's review for:
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer
by Martin J. Sherwin, Kai Bird
Oh man. This is it. This is the definitive biography. I don't even mean of Oppenheimer, I mean at all, ever, of anyone. This book is a monster. The official page count is over 700, but you're looking at an easy 550-600 pages of biography, dissecting the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer the way a surgeon opens a person up to work on a heart.
It apparently took the authors 25 years to put this together. Twenty. Five. Years. They flew around the world, interviewed as many of the people that knew Oppenheimer as possible, and dug into the insane amount of pages of FBI documents (I think they said somewhere north of 10,000 pages?).
The crazy thing is how good it is. You really get to see Oppenheimer - the man revered and reviled as the father of the atomic bomb - as a full on person, and not just a figure out of history. He had triumphs, tragedies, a wife, kids, arguments with the government, people turning traitor on him, and even disagreements with Einstein.
American Prometheus isn't just a quarter century of research and an intense amount of information. It's the story of a remarkable life in five parts, and a reflection of the times that life was lived in.
I am glad I read it, and I encourage others to do the same. Just make sure you're expecting a shorter, 200 page snapshot.
It apparently took the authors 25 years to put this together. Twenty. Five. Years. They flew around the world, interviewed as many of the people that knew Oppenheimer as possible, and dug into the insane amount of pages of FBI documents (I think they said somewhere north of 10,000 pages?).
The crazy thing is how good it is. You really get to see Oppenheimer - the man revered and reviled as the father of the atomic bomb - as a full on person, and not just a figure out of history. He had triumphs, tragedies, a wife, kids, arguments with the government, people turning traitor on him, and even disagreements with Einstein.
American Prometheus isn't just a quarter century of research and an intense amount of information. It's the story of a remarkable life in five parts, and a reflection of the times that life was lived in.
I am glad I read it, and I encourage others to do the same. Just make sure you're expecting a shorter, 200 page snapshot.